Tuesday 20 February 2007

Beijingers learn 'civilized behaviour'

The municipal government has launched the first ‘Queuing Day’ on February 11th. This event, on the 11th of each month is part of a campaign for Beijingers to show ‘civilized behaviour’ ahead of the 2008 Olympics.

The 11th was picked because the two figures 1 – 1 look like two people queuing.

At this very first Queuing Day thousands of volunteers were sent to bus-stops and subway train stations to supervise passengers to line up correctly. However after 5.30pm when the official Queuing Day was over everybody rushed to the arriving buses as usual.

Another improvement in public behaviour was observed by the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau. According to its director Zhang, the ratio of people spitting in public declined from 8.4% in 2005 to 4.9% in 2006. And incidents of littering fell from 9.1% to 5.3%. Source: China Daily, February 12th, 2007

I have no idea where the spitting figures come from. It is very amusing for someone living in Beijing and being forced to listen to the ‘throat-nose-cleaning-procedure’ and paying attention to not been hit by the result of it when over passing a cyclist.

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